Thursday, September 3, 2015

Paper cuts

As regular readers know, Wednesday night is Trivia Night. Last night, in a discussion with fellow team mate and friend Wayne, he commented that he had seen a painting of a feather that was so fine and detailed that it was hard to believe that it was a painting.

As regular readers will also know, I am not a great fan of photo realism as art. My view is that apart from the Wow! factor, ie amazement that it is a painting and not a photograph, the question then becomes that if it is indistinguishable from a photograph, why not just take a photograph? This is all the more so when the objects painted are people in showers, bowls of fruit, Coke cans and so on.

I further commented to Wayne that I had recently seem a paper cut of a feather that was also so detailed that it was hard to credit that it had been done with a surgical knife. . .

The works are by artist Maude White, who lives in Buffalo in the US.

The following is from her website at:

http://bravebirdpaperart.com/

I’ve never been a book reader, but I collect books. In a way, I’m more fascinated by the weight and permanence, the constancy of paper, than I am interested in what’s written on paper. I started cutting paper because I wanted to have a conversation with the paper, not a conversation using the paper. I didn’t want to write on the paper, I wanted to write in the paper and in that way start a more symbiotic relationship with the paper. I have great respect for paper. I trust it. There is something very comforting and safe about cutting into the paper, discovering some story hidden inside.

I’ve said this as a joke, but it’s true nonetheless: there is no going back from the knife. One of the challenges of papercutting is the permanence of each cut. With a knife there’s no erasing, there’s no painting over, there’s no backspace. I have to be very sure I want to make each cut before I put my blade to the paper. Very often this is satisfying and empowering, but sometimes it can be stressful. Also, I sometimes find that the cut paper I end up with isn’t anything like the image I’d imagined cutting. I’m always learning and adjusting.

I have to confess that, like Maude, I am something of a paper cut artist myself. One of my works, created especially for this post, appears below. See if you can work out which one it is.

Gallery:

For those who haven't worked out which was my art work, it was the one that said "Bytes". The word gave it away, right?